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continuing education

For my last interview on online education, I tapped Susan Salvo. Susan and I are Facebook friends and I’ve learned a great deal from her about teaching and being a better massage educator. She has great experience teaching massage students and massage continuing education.

Susan Salvo is a board certified massage therapist with 30+ years of experience. She loves to research information and write about it. She has written two best-selling textbooks: Massage Therapy: Principles and Practice and Mosby’s Guide to Pathology for Massage Therapists. She has contributed and reviewed manuscripts for other publications.

Susan stays in touch with massage therapists. She has a thriving massage practice, receives massages regularly, and teaches basic education at the Louisiana Institute of Massage Therapy. She is well-travelled and conducts continuing education workshops around the country. Susan also designs and teaches online courses and posts instructional videos on YouTube.

Susan is a life-long learner and perpetual student. She has an associate degree in history, a bachelors in education, and a masters in instructional technology and is currently working on her doctorate in education.

Susan Salvo – Educator, Author, Massage Therapist

Have you taken online courses in the past? Were they massage-related?

Yes. I have taken many online courses. Some were college courses related to degree-attainment and some were massage continuing education courses.

Was the course live (webinar format) or learn at your own pace?

The online “credit” courses had specific deadlines. Online courses are often promoted as self-paced, but they are not because students were expected to complete assignments within a time frame.

Was this teaching/learning technique effective?

How I answer that question largely depends on what my educational “goals” were for each online course. If my goal was to obtain college credits or CE credits, the answer is YES. If it was to have a fulfilling educational experience, the answer is often NO. I define “learning” as a “relatively permanent change in behavior due to experience.” Anyone who has taken both traditional face-to-face (f-2-f) courses and online courses know that these experiences are different.

As a student, what worked the best for you?

As a student, I like a mixture of teaching methods. I enjoy lectures, I enjoy reading, I enjoy meaningful discussions, I enjoy researching information, I enjoy writing, and I enjoy working on projects with fellow classmates. I even enjoy taking tests. I LOVE LEARNING!

As a student, what did you think needed improvement or change?

Be sure directions are clear and concise. This is a frequent complaint. When an online instructor gives confusing assignments, students read or listen for an hour on their computers and then think, “What am I supposed to do?”

Be present with students and let them feel that presence. The worst class I’ve ever taken was by a professor who believed in “collaborative learning,” which meant students did most of the teaching. This approach is fine if students knew what they were talking about. Unfortunately, most students did not actively participate and the professor did not facilitate well. Most of the coursework involved reading poorly written or confusing summaries and posting responses to irrelevant questions. The class was a big waste of time and money. Research shows that when students have frequent contact with instructors, engagement rates increased by 10%. Don’t treat students like the lone learner.

Be sure you can receive large files over the internet or use a cloud. I do a lot with videos and graphics. Many of my projects are huge and when I submit then, the LMS usually has a limit on file size. This is a source of student frustration.

Create videos or webinars with a chapter-format like a movie DVD. This way, students can then easily locate specific information. Otherwise, we may listen to most of the lecture to locate one piece of information. Accessing information later is a huge benefit of online over f-2-f classes. Be sure you have a “table of contents” with time codes or hyperlinks we can use to navigate the wonderful videos and webinar you are posting and take full advantage of this medium.

Be sure information is from credible sources. Textbooks are written, edited, reviewed by a team of subject matter experts. Teachers and students can be confident that the information is solid and well-vetted. Many (if not most) online courses fail to cite their sources or use outdated sources or worse — just throw information online without consulting any credible sources.

Give students choices. Offer both online and f-2-f versions of your courses. This may mean you need to outsource educational options you don’t offer, but we need options to help us make the best choices we can based on our individual education goals.

Have you taught any online courses in the past?

Yes, I have taught many online courses.

What format was this course? (Ex. Live webinar, pre-recorded video, etc).

I’ve used learning management systems (LMSs). In 2010, I began teaching a 30-hour online pathology course as part of our basic massage curriculum.

I’ve used webinars. Keep in mind that “live” webinars are fast becoming a rarity. When webinars made their first debut, they were aired live with limited audience participation. Hosting companies soon realized that most webinar viewing occurred “after” the webinar and were accessed as archived courses. Because of this trend, most webinars are now prerecorded.

I’ve used webquests and web-based discussion boards and reflection logs. These were extensions of f-2-f lessons. My goal for their use is to promote academic success by optimizing the learning experience. Students may spend part of their lesson time watching web-based tutorials and documentaries or interacting with classmates online. One thing I’ve noticed about online participation is that it builds a healthy, robust learning community that often extends after graduation.

How did you assess the students’ learning?

For credit online courses, I use exams — usually a multiple-choice or essay format.

For discussion boards, webquests, and reflection logs, students were given a participation grade. I post a rubric with specific evaluation criteria.

As a teacher, was this an effective way to deliver a course?

Yes, they fit the learning objectives I have for my students.

As a teacher, what did you think worked the best for you?

I like to teach using a mixture of teaching methods and both online and f-2-f formats. Online learning has lots of advantages and we should use them – all of them. Face-to-face learning also has lots of advantages and we use them too. We are beyond the point of deciding whether or not we will accept online courses in our schools. It’s here and here to stay. The crucial task at hand is to decide how to implement this technology effectively into instruction. As a conscientious teacher, I cannot ignore the research that has come out about online education and it has been mixed. Drop-out rates are higher than in f-2-f classes and some at-risk students do not do well in online learning environments. It seems a little premature to abandon “tried and true” teaching methods such as lectures and classroom discussions. Lecture-based courses tend to be well attended & allow us to cover a lot of content in a relatively short amount of time.

What do you think the future is for online learning in the massage school teaching environment?

Online courses should be offered in our basic curriculum. We need to be clear about which courses should be offered and which should not be offered. If students are struggling in these online courses or indicate they want to drop out, perhaps offer alternatives which may mean the opposite learning environment. If our goal is to “educate” students, be sure our methods are providing these students with the best educational environment possible.

What do you think the future is for online learning in the continuing education environment?

The need for online CE courses will grow and continue to grow.

Do you see any roadblocks to that future?

No. Things are moving along nicely. I am excited about growing use of flipped classrooms and blended learning. Many progressive massage teachers such as Annie LeCroix are using this format and loving it. There is something almost magical about blending instructor-led classroom instruction with online instruction as each delivers something the other does not.

Any further thoughts or comments that you would like to share or discuss?

Technology affords us unprecedented means to communicate and educate. It is essential to develop methods to match our resources. Educators need to keep both eyes open and make changes to their couI’vrses based on current research and student needs/feedback. I am very optimistic and look forward to the being part of the changing face of massage education.

I WANT TO THANK Susan FOR Her TIME AND GENEROSITY IN SHARING THIS INFORMATION WITH ME.

If you have any questions or comments, please share them below. I would love to hear your thoughts.

When it comes to online education, one of the names that comes up is Whitney Lowe. Whitney Lowe began exploring massage in the mid 1980s. He has been teaching pathophysiology, rehabilitation strategies, massage therapy applications, and other topics in rehabilitation science for over 2 decades.

He teaches live and online courses in Orthopedic Massage. You can find more information about Whitney and his courses at OMERI, Orthopedic Massage Training. Whitney was kind enough to answer my big list of questions.

Whitney Lowe – OMERI Orthopedic Massage Training

Have you taken any online courses in the past? Were they massage related?

Yes, I have taken quite a number of online courses. Some of them were related to massage, while others were not.

Was the course live (webinar format) or learn at your own pace?

Again, I’ve taken courses in both formats (webinar or synchronous forms as well as asynchronous self-paced courses).

Was this teaching/learning technique effective?

I would say it was effective in some instances and not effective in others. It was not so much about synchronous versus asynchronous courses as much as it was the quality of instructional design behind the course that was built. I have found that to be true across the board in all online education courses that I have been involved with. It’s not so much about the delivery platform, but is much more about the quality of instructional design.

As a student, what worked the best for you?

I have a strong preference for asynchronous course material because I prefer to work at my own pace with the option to review or rewind content if I need to go through it again, and at the same time having the ability to skip through things that I’m already well-versed in or familiar with.

As a student, what did you think needed improvement or change?

In too many of these courses, there simply wasn’t any significant engagement with the content. A webinar is basically a passive lecture where you have to sit and look at your computer screen for an hour or so. It is certainly possible to make this interesting, but too many people just make it a boring Powerpoint presentation with no personal interaction. In many of the other courses, they were limited to watching short video clips or reading content and taking a multiple-choice test. It is definitely possible, to get good information across in this fashion, but there are many other ways to make it more interesting and engaging.

From your website, I see that you teach bodywork courses online. What format do you use for your courses? (Ex. Live webinar, pre-recorded video, etc)

I use a variety of different formats in our online orthopedic massage courses. I use video, audio presentations, reading materials, and numerous other interactive course activities including highly complex virtual client scenarios. It should be noted that the majority of what I’m teaching in the online environment is not about a massage technique. It is far more about the comprehensive aspects of rehabilitation science (kinesiology, biomechanics, pathology, injury management, assessment, treatment planning, physiology, etc.). These topics translate exceptionally well to the online environment. However, that doesn’t mean we ignore focusing on massage techniques as there is a fair amount of technique content delivered through video demonstration.

How do you asses students’ learning?

Throughout the course work students must submit a number of different assignments. There are also numerous formative assessment activities throughout the course where they must demonstrate their understanding before they can move on to the next group of activities. I evaluate their submitted assignments and they get comprehensive and detailed feedback on these assignments that are submitted. There is actually far more assessment of student learning in this online format than I was ever able to accomplish in teaching live workshops.

As a teacher, was this an effective way to deliver a course?

I think it is a highly effective way to deliver a course, but again the key component is about the quality of instructional design. There are plenty of examples of very poor courses and poor learning activities as well, so just because something can be done online or in the classroom doesn’t mean it is good quality. The quality of the instructor and most importantly in the online format, the knowledge and skill of the instructional designer and course developer(s) are crucial for an effective course.

What is missing from the current online course delivery systems? If you had a team of software developers, what would you have them create or change?

The biggest thing that I see missing from today’s online courses is interactivity. We have the technology to make highly complex and realistic scenario-based learning, which is exceptional for creating the most ideal learning environments. However, it is still highly expensive, labor-intensive and knowledge intensive to produce these types of learning experiences. Yet, I think in the future you’ll see this kind of thing happening more and more frequently. One of the most exciting developments that I think is coming down the pike in online education is adaptive learning. Adaptive learning is the capability for the learning experience to adapt to the unique needs of the student so that each student is not getting a cookie-cutter approach, but instead is able to get things that are specific to their learning needs and desires. You simply cannot do that with classroom-based learning and this is one the great advantages of what is occurring in the online education community.

What do you think the future is for online learning in the massage school teaching environment?

I think there’s a great future for online learning in the massage education environment. However we have a long way to go to educate our instructors about technology and education. Right now there is a tremendous amount of fear in our profession about online education and mostly that comes from a lack of understanding of what it is really about. Some people think that the increasing use of online education will take away from the learning environment of connecting with another person. That doesn’t have to be the case at all. Clearly, learning how to connect with another individual in the therapeutic environment is a key and crucial skill for our education. However, that doesn’t mean that sitting still in a desk for hours listening to a lecture in anatomy is the best way to do that either. I think we can blend together incredible learning experiences and create highly complex hybrid learning environments that really focus on the way people learn.

Do you see any roadblocks to that future?

Currently, I think the biggest roadblocks to this progress are the legislative obstacles that prevent online education from being used in the entry-level massage environment. Legislators need to get out of the way and let educational innovation take root in our field. The prohibition against online education at the entry-level for massage therapists is simply ridiculous. If online education is good enough for Stanford medical school (where it is used extensively) are we really sure that it is not good enough for massage therapy education?

What do you thing the future is for online learning in the continuing education environment?

I think you will continue to see a very large amount of online learning in the continuing education environment. There are so many advantages for this learning format for continuing education. Because it is now increasingly expensive to attend live classes, people find this to be a great value for meeting continuing education requirements. There is also a very clear geographical bias against people who do not live near large metropolitan areas to get quality education classes. Online education has the potential to level the playing field and make high-quality educational opportunities available to everyone regardless of where they live at a very affordable price.

Do you see any roadblocks to that future?

Again, the primary roadblocks to this seem to be legislative because many state massage licensure laws do not allow more than a small percentage of the required continuing education hours to be granted through online education. This is again a ridiculous requirement. The purpose of continuing education requirements is to continue the professional development of an individual. There is nothing that says you cannot develop professionally through online education and can only develop professionally through taking a class in a physical classroom. There are a very large number of poor classroom educational requirements that will fulfill the continuing education requirement for an individual and yet, they can go through an entire Masters degree program in rehabilitation science at the University of British Columbia, which is offered completely online, and get virtually no credit for it. Does that make any sense?

Any further thoughts or comments that you would like to share or discuss?

I have been involved with online education since the early 2000s, when I first began to see this as an opportunity to teach clinical reasoning and critical thinking skills that I was not able to deliver in the classroom due to time limitations of the weekend workshop format. I spent at least five years researching the field and learning a great deal about technology, multimedia learning theory, software, and delivery platforms before I ever launched my first course. I have routinely said to people that it is relatively easy to create an online course, and quite hard to create a good one. I hope that in the future we can see a greater degree of attention focused on demonstrating high quality learning strategies so that the profession’s perception of online education is not simply based on seeing the proliferation of low-quality simplistic courses that involve reading just a PDF or watching a webinar and taking a multiple-choice test.

I WANT TO THANK Whitney for his TIME AND GENEROSITY IN SHARING THIS INFORMATION WITH ME.

If you have any questions or comments, please share them below. I would love to hear your thoughts.

As I’ve published posts on online education, some of my readers have sent suggestions on who I should talk to. One of those names that keeps coming up is Jan Schwartz.

Jan Schwartz, M.A. is co-founder and president of Education and Training Solutions, a web-based elearning company which designs and hosts online courses. She has worked in education and training since 1988. Schwartz served as the Director of Education at the Desert Institute of the Healing Arts in Tucson, AZ and as an Executive Vice President of Education at Cortiva Institute.

Schwartz served as a Commissioner for the Commission on Massage Therapy Accreditation for five years and served as Chair of the Commission for three years. She was the Chair of the Commission when they were granted approval as an accrediting body by the United States Department of Education and when the Commission developed the first accepted competencies for the field of massage therapy. She is also a past member of the Board of Trustees for the Massage Therapy Foundation (MTF) and is currently on the advisory board of the MTF.

As a founding member of the Academic Consortium for Complementary and Alternative Health Care (ACCAHC) Schwartz currently serves on the executive committee. She co-chaired the Education Working Group for 5 years and remains a member of the committee. In addition, Schwartz contributed to chapters in several books. She received her bachelor’s degree in Economics from Rutgers University and her master’s degree in Sustainable Entrepreneurship at Prescott College. The focus of her M.A. was in the area of online education business.

Jan was kind enough to take the time to answer a lot of questions and I learned a great deal from her insights into online education.

Jan Schwartz – Education and Training Solutions

Have you taken any online courses in the past? Were they massage related?

I’ve taken several online courses in the past and some were massage related. I took the massage courses mostly because I wanted to see how others were defining and creating online courses. I generally take several online courses each year, primarily on education and online learning topics. Some have been MOOCs, some webinars and some interactive facilitated courses.

What got you started in designing online courses for massage therapists?

I was working for a large corporate school that was looking to standardize their curriculum across all of the campuses, from FL to WA. I thought one way to do that would be to put some of the non-hands on courses online and allow multiple campuses to take a course together or in groups made up of students from different campuses. I thought it would also be a way to build a culture within the company.

From your website, I see that you are using Moodle* to deliver your online courses. What helped you decide on Moodle?

I first investigated Moodle when I was working for the corporate school. Moodle was, and still is, open access and free to use. So it was an easy way to experiment. I am a big fan of Open Education Resources and Creative Commons licensing, so Moodle was attractive to me because of the community of learners that were involved. Plus, there wasn’t much else out there that wasn’t outrageously expensive!

I then found some online courses offered by a Moodle partner and was impressed with how robust the platform was and how (fairly) easy it was to use. First and foremost I needed a platform that could create groups within it and Moodle could do that. I started the investigative process around 2002 and came to Moodle in about 2005.

At the same time I had been having a lot of phone conversations with Whitney Lowe (we had not formed our joint venture at this point) and it turns out he too was investigating Moodle. It was helpful to bounce ideas off each other and in the end we both chose Moodle for our respective projects.

What are the drawbacks, if any?

I don’t really see any drawbacks to Moodle. The Moodle community is both huge in number and outstanding in skill and knowledge; and almost any question that is asked on a forum gets a quick answer. People are very willing to help problem solve. Of course, now we host with an outside vendor so we get help there too. Moodle does everything we need it to do and more.

That said, you still need to learn how to move around in it, as an instructor and as an administrator. It’s not always intuitive.

What format do you use for your courses? (Ex. Live webinar, pre-recorded video, etc)

Primarily our courses are self-paced, self-directed (or categorized as home study by NCBTMB). People work through modules one at a time and at the end, after completing what we call a final knowledge check, they can generate a certificate. The newer version of Moodle allows us to hide succeeding modules until the current one is complete. In most of our courses we use problem, or scenario, based learning. The courses consist of outside websites, branched scenarios, videos and screencasts.

We’ve also run courses that include online discussions. One of the schools that use one of our self-directed courses asked to customize the course to include dates instead of topics and add discussion forums and the ability to upload assignments. We were able to do that easily for them.

How do you asses students’ learning?

Primarily through scenario based “quizzes” for the ce courses that are self paced and self directed. One cannot get to the final quiz until all the material has been viewed.

In the business course I teach, students upload assignments to the dropbox on the course site module, I comment and send back to them. For the discussion boards I use a rubric to grade the level of post. In general it’s not much different than how I would grade in the classroom, except online everyone must participate in the discussion, as opposed to just raising their hands in the classroom.

As a teacher, was this an effective way to deliver a course?

Works for me! I currently teach a hybrid, or flipped, business course at an acupuncture school. The curriculum is pretty much the same as you will find in a massage school (where I used to teach business), but twice as long as most with 5 credits. I’ve been teaching it this way for four years. Some think that the flipped classroom is a new concept–it is not. Students really like it because the time in the class is spent creating their work, sharing with each other and getting specific questions asked and answered instead of listening to me talk. In addition, there is not an option to not participate in the discussion forums if a student wants the points, so this works well for getting people engaged. It is also helpful for those who need some time to think before they respond. It also allows flexibility for my travel schedule. It’s easier on the students too, they don’t fall behind just because they miss a class. No snow days. 🙂

As a course developer, what is missing from the current online course delivery systems? I.E. if you had a team of software developers, what would you have them create or change?

I’m not sure that anything is missing. There are so many plug-ins that can be used that everything we need is covered. You can take a program like voice thread and plug it into an LMS if you want students to literally talk to each other. There are tools to create things like mind maps, self-paced storylines and capture lectures that can be plugged in. All can either be done in the delivery system or uploaded into it. Everyday something new is popping up. What we look for now are improvements of what we already have. That’s what is so cool about Moodle. There is a huge community out there constantly working on improving and developing new tools. The amount of sharing that goes on is really quite awesome.

What do you think the future is for online learning in the massage school teaching environment?

I see the community colleges jumping on the bandwagon right now because they have the infrastructure in place. At the last ABMP School Issues Forum I saw a huge shift in the level of schools’ interest in online education. There are enough doing it now that the others are getting their questions answered by those who are actually using the various platforms.

Do you see any roadblocks to that future?

Licensing boards are the biggest obstacle. The laws need to be rewritten so that schools can make the decision about how courses are taught, not massage board members, many of whom are not educators.

The next biggest obstacle is teacher buy-in and training. It doesn’t matter if a school owner wants online education if they don’t have buy-in from faculty and provide training on both creating a course and delivering a course. Online courses and delivery of those courses is quite different from standing in front of live students.

What do you thing the future is for online learning in the continuing education environment?

I think CE is leading the charge in this environment, but I would sure like to see some more creative courses out there besides webinars. It’s happening slowly and some good people are taking the risks to make it happen.

Do you see any roadblocks to that future?

Not really. I do think that all states that have CE requirements need to lighten up on how many hours can be taken online. After practicing for 20 years and knowing what I wanted to know, it became a real challenge to find something where I wasn’t just paying for the hours. There comes a point in time that you know what you want and need and being forced to find a hands on class that will neither teach you anything new or challenge you in any way is a waste of time and money, and quite frankly, insulting. Professionals should be able to make these decisions for themselves.

Any further thoughts or comments that you would like to share or discuss?

What I like about online learning, as an educator, is that I learn something new every single day. I like engaging in the conversations on education blogs and participating in MOOCs and other courses where there is discussion. There are always people many steps ahead of me who are willing to share and to help problem solve.

I want to thank Jan for her time and generosity in sharing this information with me.

If you have any questions or comments, please share them below. I would love to hear your thoughts.

Moodle (acronym for Modular Object-Oriented Dynamic Learning Environment) (stylised in lower-case as moodle) is a free software e-learning platform, also known as a Learning Management System, or Virtual Learning Environment (VLE). As of June 2013 it had a user base of 83,008 registered and verified sites, serving 70,696,570 users in 7.5+ million courses with 1.2+ million teachers.[3]

Moodle was originally developed by Martin Dougiamas to help educators create online courses with a focus on interaction and collaborative construction of content, and is in continual evolution. The first version of Moodle was released on 20 August 2002.

In my last post, I wrote about all of the nuts and bolts it took for me to create an online ethics course for massage therapists. Today, I’m going to discuss some of what I learned from the beta testers.

Note: beta testers are people who sign up to use a piece of software or product knowing that there will be problems with that product. In exchange for free or very low cost access to the product, they provide valuable feedback on errors, issues, and usability. In order to fully test my course, my beta testers paid $1.00. This fee was chosen so that I could test out the PayPal integration.

My beta testers used a variety of devices and internet browsers, some using multiple devices and browsers. This helped me make sure that the course works in modern, up to date browsers. But mostly, they gave me great feedback on what the course was like for them as students.

I’m just going to give a big old THANK YOU to my beta testers! You guys rock!

A little background on the course

I’ve been teaching ethics in massage school for many years and I’ve been teaching ethics CE courses since it became a requirement in WA state, about 4 or 5 years. I’ve tweaked the course and slide deck multiple times and added in new examples as they come along. I’ve even created a second version of the course, Ethics and the Internet, so that MTs who have already taken my first class get some new material.

My teaching method is primarily lecture of the principles and group discussion of the examples I bring in. In live courses, we also spend a considerable amount of time discussing ethics situations which the MTs bring in. I don’t do role play exercises. Mostly because I despise role play in classes and will find almost any excuse to avoid participating in them, including faking major illness. Really. I hate role play.

My main teaching materials are Power Point slide presentations. Before you groan and roll your eyes, I want to assure you that I don’t use those kinds of slides. You know the ones I’m talking about: 200 words on each slide that the presenter reads from. No. Absolutely not.

I’ve been speaking in public for about 20 years. I’ve had advanced training in slide development and public speaking. Other than having a habit of rocking back and forth a bit, I’m actually pretty damn good at it. Good enough that I usually scored in the top 3 of my tracks at the Intel Developer’s Forum.

Here’s one of the main things you learn about slides: they are prompts for the speaker so we can make sure we cover everything we need to and they shouldn’t prevent the listener from paying attention to the speaker. About 3-5 bullet points per slide. Less is more. The point is to keep the audience (students in this case) paying attention to the teacher. This lets me, as the teacher, see if the students are engaged in the material, comprehending the material, and diverge from the material to answer questions and lead discussions.

For live teaching events, slides are pretty spare.

My online course was 4 – 50 minute pre-recorded videos of me giving the same lecture over the same slides I use in my live class. Since there wasn’t anyone to ask questions, I interjected questions and discussion points that have come up in previous live classes.

Student feedback

Flexibility of online classes is a plus

The students loved the ability to break the class up into pieces and fit them into their schedules. Some of my beta testers work on the weekends and that makes weekend CE classes difficult to accommodate in their schedule. Other testers work evenings. The rest work week days. Most live CE courses take place on the weekends, but having them online makes it easy to fit into any work schedule.

Videos are a plus

One student commented that closing the browser meant that she had to start the video from the beginning. That can’t really be prevented. One thing that could improve this experience would be to break the video up into smaller videos, allowing students to break up the hour long lesson into even shorter pieces. Another student had her tablet with her in the kitchen and listened to the course while she washed dishes, glancing up at the slides from time to time. Another student commented that hearing my voice and where I was placing emphasis helped her understand the material and was more interesting than getting the same information by reading a book.

Slides for live presentations are kind of boring in online courses

All those skills at creating great slide decks? They’re not so useful in an online course where the online thing to look at is those slides. “… more graphics” “… more pictures” were common comments.

Handouts would be a nice option

Having some ‘printed’ materials they can download for reference or to take notes on was a request by a couple of the testers. Not everyone wants this, but since it doesn’t cost anything to make the materials available as a downloadable pdf file, it seems like a good idea.

Improving the online ethics course for massage therapists

As I begin preparing the next online course, some of the things I will be doing:

Breaking each hour into smaller segments. This will give the students even more flexibility. Shorter segments should also improve student attention.

Using shorter, more dynamic video content. It’s a visual medium and I need to make greater use of that ability.

Mixing up the teaching materials – using text based and video based materials for each lesson. To accommodate different learning styles.

Providing notes or ‘workbooks’ that students can download and print out. Give them some reference material for future use.

Technically, I’m happy with the software solutions I’m using. The students found very few technical issues and those were ironed out pretty quickly. The course was a lot of fun to create and I’ve learned even more about online course design. I’m looking forward to taking what I’ve learned and applying it to other courses in the future.

If you’re interested in taking the course yourself, you can sign up for it at my education website, Mountain Shadow Education*. I’m also interested in any questions or suggestions you might have. Feel free to use the comment section below.

* My business is named for Mt. Rainier, which dominates the skyline on clear days.

Before I dive in to the geeky and technical stuff about creating an online ethics course for massage therapists, I’d like to explain why I thought it was worth the time, trouble and expense.

It’s all about Geography

I live in Washington, one of the most beautiful states in the US. From where I live, I’m less than 2 hours from the ocean, the mountains, and 2 national parks. It’s a big state full of beautiful places to visit. Yes, it’s rainy here all the time. At least in the part of the state where I live. But there’s another part of the state where it’s sunny most of the time. That’s where the apples come from.

What separates the state into two different regions is the Cascade mountain range. I’m sure you’ve all seen pictures of Mt. Rainier. If not, here’s a shot I took while on a hike. Beautiful, no?

Most massage therapists don’t live in the urban centers

While beautiful, the mountains and the miles make it hard for many of the massage therapists in Washington state to get their continuing education. Like many massage therapists in the country, they live far from the big urban centers where most CE courses are offered. Whenever they take a continuing education class, they usually have a long drive, an overnight stay, and meals to pay for. This also means that they have to close their practice down for a day or two, making the financial burden even greater.

With that in mind, I decided to put my most popular ethics class online. What follows is a description of what it took for me to do that. I thought it might be handy for any of you thinking about teaching a class online or taking an online ethics class.

Online Ethics course for massage therapists – requirements

In Washington state, we are required to take 4 hours of ethics continuing education and this must contain 2 hours devoted to professionalism and boundaries. There are several CE classes being offered that meet the 4 hours, but neglect the state’s requirement for these two topics. My course is designed to meet that requirement and includes it in the title. For NCBTMB recertification, you are required to take 3 hours of ethics continuing education.

Delivery method

There are really 3 methods of course delivery open to you: written, recorded, or live webinar.

You can deliver your course material as text. That text can be on the webpage or it can be as a downloadable PDF document.

You can record your course material as a video.

You can host your course as a live Webinar (web seminar).

Live Webinars

Live webinars have the advantage of allowing students to ask questions in real time. The disadvantages of live webinars include the lack of scheduling flexibility for the student and that any technical problems can interrupt the class.

Webpage Text

Text course materials are inexpensive to deliver. If you are using webpage text, they are simply typed into the webpage. While this is inexpensive and requires no great technical skill, the big disadvantage is that very few people actually read web pages. They skim them. So this kind of text-heavy course delivery is unlikely to be successful in delivering the key learning. The key advantage for the student is that they can study at their own pace and convenience.

PDF documents

PDF documents are also inexpensive to deliver. Almost every word processor out there can create a PDF file and uploading the file to your website is fairly easy. PDF documents are more likely to be read than web text, and that can result in greater learning retention. Again, the key advantage for the student is that they can study at their own pace and convenience.

Pre-recorded videos

Recorded videos have the advantage of not allowing students to skim through the text and the combination of audio and video can help keep their interest. Disadvantages of video is that it requires more upfront cost in recording software and video hosting.

The pre-recorded video delivery methods also allows the student to take the course when it’s convenient for them. They can also break up the course material rather than sit through 4 hours of webinars. It doesn’t require a lot of writing up front but does require a certain amount of speaking skills.

My choice for delivery was pre-recorded video. I’m an experienced and confident speaker and all of my live materials could be utilized to create the course. I’m tech savvy and able to record and edit video myself. It seemed like a no-brainer to choose the video delivery.

Requirements to deliver an online video course

Learning Management System

In a nutshell, an LMS is software that delivers course materials, tracks a student’s progress, allows for testing a student’s comprehension and creates reports. I’m a big fan of WordPress to build websites. It seems there is a plugin (a small app) for just about everything. The two big contenders for WordPress LMS plugins are WP Courseware and LearnDash. LearnDash hadn’t been ported to WordPress when I started my course, so that left me with WP Courseware.

Testing for completion and comprehension

In order to verify that your student has completed the course, you should do some level of testing. In a live class, you know if they’ve been there for the entire class and you can observe whether or not they seem to be understanding the material. With an online class, you don’t have that. So a quiz or an essay is the most common method to check that the student has completed the course and understands the material. Testing for a technique course would be difficult, but testing for an online ethics course for massage therapists is very easy. The LMS (learning management system) plugin should have the ability to give quizzes and automatically score everything except essay questions. Both WP Courseware and LearnDash have that ability.

Printing certificates of completion

Since my quizzes are multiple choice, the student knows right away if they have passed the course. If they have passed all of the quizzes, my LMS will automatically generate a certificate of completion. This is handy for those students who have procrastinated and need their CE hours immediately.

Controlling access to the material

If you’re going to charge for a course, you need to make sure that non-registered students don’t have access to the materials. No fair getting your CE credits for free! This is the job of a membership plugin. I’ve been using Wishlist Member for many years now and WP Courseware has integration with Wishlist Member built in.

Taking Payment

PayPal is my online payment vendor of choice, although I’ve heard very good things about Stripe. WP Courseware and Wishlist Member both have PayPal integration built in.

Recording video

My videos are me speaking over my slides. Not the most dynamic or visuals, but it does keep the course material in sync with my live instructions. The hardware needed for this is a good quality USB microphone – I use the Blue Yeti Mic – and a computer – a MacBook. The software I use for recording webinars and video course materials is Screenflow. The Windows equivalent is Camtasia. And, of course, I’m using PowerPoint but Keynote will work just as well.

Video Hosting

I don’t recommend hosting your own video. The bandwidth required will probably have your web host suspending your account and the load speed of your site and your videos is probably going to be terrible. Using YouTube is great for sharing videos publicly, but not if you want to limit views to paying students. For that, most people in the industry use Vimeo. No, it’s not free, but Vimeo has settings that will limit where the video can be embedded or streamed from. This keeps people from stealing your content and presenting it as their own.

Putting all the pieces together

Let’s recap. We have:

WordPress

Learning Management System (LMS) plugin

Membership plugin

Video recording software

Video hosting service

Online payment service

Of these, we have to get the LMS, membership plugin and online payment service to work together. It took me the better part of a week to find the missing pieces and choose the solutions. Yes, they are all WordPress plugins and that makes the final work much easier. But I won’t kid you, actually getting all of these moving parts working together was very time consuming and very complex.

I spend about 40 hours a week working with WordPress. I’ve used PayPal, Vimeo, and Wishlist Member on multiple websites. I am a support moderator for a WordPress theme vendor. I speak at WordPress events. I know WordPress. But getting the LMS and the membership plugin and PayPal to work together, creating all of the landing pages, student pages, confirmation pages, sign-in pages and course module pages took me at least 24 hours of solid, uninterrupted work. And that didn’t include any of the initial WordPress website work or theme design.

If you aren’t familiar with WordPress or any of these plugins, I would guess that you would probably spend about 100 hours trying to get it sussed out. And you still will likely not have it set up correctly.

This is where having a real web designer/developer like me will save you your sanity.

Was it worth the time, trouble and expense to create an online ethics course?

Yes. The feedback I’ve gotten from people who have taken the course has been 100% positive. They appreciate not having to travel. They like being able to schedule the lessons around their work and family time. They like being able to sign up and get their certificates the same day. They like taking a course while wearing their pajamas.

If you teach continuing education, and you’re interested in teaching some of them online, it is possible to do this yourself. The technology is all there, but I recommend hiring it out unless you are very WordPress savvy.

In a future post, I’ll discuss what I learned about the actual course material and delivery, so come back for that. In the meantime, I’d love to hear your comments or questions. Just use the comment section below.